At least 180 Chinese listed companies will be forced to cancel or scale back planned rights offerings worth $97bn in response to regulations that target excessive fundraising used for dubious acquisitions and financial speculation.

The rules come as Chinese regulators are increasingly concerned about the trend of “exit the real, enter the fake” — a phrase used to denote companies abandoning real economic activity in favour of financial engineering. Listed companies invested a record $110bn into passive financial products in 2016 even as fixed-asset investment grew at its slowest pace since 1999. 

China’s securities regulator on Friday issued regulations that restrict the use of secondary share offerings through private placements. In addition to financial products, such share sales have largely been used to fund private-equity acquisitions, with investment targets chosen to match investment “concepts” popular with retail investors, even when the target is outside the acquirer's core business.